


Row for the Shore

by Crystalshard



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: (it’s clone cadets but that doesn’t make it better), Asexual Character, Asexual Jango Fett, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Injury, Fix-It, Freedom, Gen, Good Parent Jango Fett, Jango Fett Is A Good Dad, Minor panic attack, Slavery, Threats Against Children, nobody touches Boba if he has anything to say about it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:48:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27423742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crystalshard/pseuds/Crystalshard
Summary: When a Death Watch soldier steps into the wrong bar, Jango Fett's fate shifts. He can't stop his clones from being made, but maybe - just maybe - he can learn to see them as people.It will take a mad Jedi, an ex-slave, and his own son to help him change. And if he does, he might change the fate of the galaxy itself.
Relationships: Boba Fett & Jango Fett, Jango Fett & Shmi Skywalker
Comments: 150
Kudos: 325





	1. The Truth of Galidraan

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you who want to know how I visualise Slave 1, [this](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/f/fa/JangoSlave1cleaned.jpg) very helpful diagram was what I used. 
> 
> (Yes, the mad Jedi and the ex-slave are both canon characters.)
> 
> Many thanks to the wonderful [cac0daemonia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cac0daemonia/works) for beta-reading, go check out her art!

The bounty had been handed over to Grakkus the Hutt, the fee was safely in his credit pouch, and Jango had three hours before his launch slot out of Nar Shaddaa was due. Impatience itched under his skin at the delay, his feet walking him out of Grakkus' palace while his mind drifted to Kamino. 

Kamino, where Boba was nearly ready to be decanted, along with the first test batch of clones. In a few short cycles, Jango would have his son in his arms, and the trainers he'd recruited would finally start earning their salaries. 

A faint scrape behind him pulled Jango's mind back to the here and now. One person - no, three, one unseen from the alley ahead and one Nikto approaching from the opposite direction. They must have been watching him since he'd gone into Grakkus's palace with the bounty and emerged with a bag full of credits. Cute. They thought they could outflank a Mandalorian warrior in full armor. 

Jango had never cared for waiting to be shot at. 

His blasters almost leapt into his hands as he slid aside, the shot from the thief behind him going wild and burning into the cheap duracrete wall a good arm's length away from him. Jango fired back on muscle memory alone, his blaster bolt sending the weapon spinning out of the eager Rodian's hand. 

The Nikto ahead pulled his own weapon, but there was a reason Jango had trained to dual-wield. Lift, sight, squeeze the trigger, and the Nikto fell to the ground as their wounded knee buckled under them. Jango slipped that blaster back into its holster, knowing he'd need a free hand for what came next. 

Switching his attention back to the Rodian, Jango ducked even before he'd fully focused on them. True, the vibroblade would have bounced off his armor, but the wild swing suggested that the thief was at best an amateur. Jango hated fighting untrained opponents, with all the inherent unpredictability in what they might do. 

On the other hand, they also tended to leave themselves wide open. 

Jango sprang back up and caught the second strike on his vambrace, the vibroblade skidding sparks down the metal as the Rodian's arm was forced up and away from their body. With his other hand, Jango punched forward into the Rodian's torso and fired his blaster point blank. 

The vibroblade clattered to the floor, and Jango's block changed to a grip on the Rodian's arm. Sliding one foot behind himself, he spun to face the Nikto again, the Rodian's body a handy shield between himself and danger. 

Two blaster bolts punched sloppily into the Rodian, one brushing past the slim Rodian's waist to leave char marks on Jango's broader armored torso. Jango didn't even bother to acknowledge the near-hit, snaking his blaster under the Rodian's limp arm and firing back at the Nikto and their Cathar friend. 

One of Jango's blaster bolts found its home in the Nikto's eye, the other tearing one of the Cathar's pointed ears as he tried to dodge. The Cathar screeched at the pain, dropping his blaster in favor of clapping a hand to his wounded head. He glanced at Jango, eyed the dead bodies of his two former friends, and made a dash for the same alley he'd emerged from. 

Letting the body of the Rodian collapse ungracefully to the ground, Jango eyed the rest of the street's population. Most were deliberately ignoring the ruckus, and the one or two who were watching seemed more impressed than vengeful. Straightening slowly, Jango absently spun his blaster before re-holstering it and continuing down the uncaring streets of Hutta Town. 

Even in daylight, the city was dim. People of every species moved like shadows along the walkways and underground streets, faces hard and weapons close to hand. 

Turning a corner, Jango emerged into a somewhat better-lit area. Not richer, no, but filled with neon lights advertising services both legal and quasi-legal in various languages. Here, where the Hutts controlled things, there was very little that was illegal as long as the Hutts got their cut. 

With the ease of practice, Jango ignored the garish signs. He knew where he was going, and with a little luck the bar would still be there. 

"Hey, handsome. You looking for a good time?" purred a voice from an open door. 

Jango didn't even bother looking around. "Not interested, sweetheart," he said brusquely, knowing that she wouldn't bother chasing him. There was always another potential customer around the corner in a place like this. 

The neon signs grew fewer in number as Jango turned down a side street, and almost vanished as he neared the end. _The Hunter's Harbor_ , proclaimed the peeling paint above the door in Huttese, Basic, and a couple of other languages that Jango recognized.

Pushing the door open, Jango emerged into a dimly lit bar that smelled not of the ever-present garbage of Hutta Town, but of slightly sour beer and cooking meat. The quiet susurrus of voices halted as everyone looked up at him, then re-started at the patrons turned their attention back to their own business. 

"Thought you'd retired, Fett," drawled a familiar voice from one of the wall booths. The hat gave away the Duros' identity even before Jango saw his face, and Jango tilted his helmet in query as he drew level. The other hunter obligingly answered the unasked question. "Word has it you picked up a high-paying contract somewhere out past the Rim." 

"What kind of bounty hunter would I be if I didn't keep my hand in, Bane?" Jango parried. 

"Is that what you're doing here, then?" 

"That, and this place serves food that won't poison most sentients." 

Cad Bane chuckled. "Hah. Sit down, let me buy you a drink." 

Jango debated the idea for a second or two. At their level, there were few bounty hunters that could match them, which brought a certain camaraderie along with their professional rivalry. It was . . . satisfying, to meet an equal. And the booth was in a good position, where he could see out but few would notice him.

Jango slid into the opposite side of the booth, and Bane focused those red, pupil-less eyes on him. "What do you want to drink?" 

"Whatever decent ale they've got on tap," Jango told him, removing his helmet and settling it on the seat between himself and the wall. 

Bane eyed him for a few seconds longer, then nodded. "Sure." 

When Bane signaled for the droid server to come over, Jango added his own request for food to Bane's drink order. It might be a while before he left Kamino again, with its bland and nutritionally tailored diet, and at least here they didn't cater to Hutts. Call him picky, but Jango preferred a place where they didn't serve your food still squeaking. 

When the droid rolled away, Bane leaned in. "Let me guess," he drawled. "You brought in Vert Lukta?" 

The corners of Jango's eyes crinkled in amusement. "Is that the game you're playing? You figure out who my bounty was by throwing names at me?" 

"Maybe." Bane leaned back as far as his hat would let him, affecting nonchalance. "What do I win if I get it right?" 

Jango chuckled. "Nothing. Grakkus paid extra for a private delivery." 

Bane seemed oddly disappointed by that, which puzzled Jango for a moment. Bane wasn't usually one for gossip, and he understood professional silence as well as Jango did. He wouldn't have made it as far as he had with a loose tongue. 

A heavy silence descended, one that Jango had no interest in breaking. If Bane wanted to say something, the he'd have to say it. Jango had no unnatural Jedi powers that would let him read Bane's mind. 

It lasted until the droid delivered their drinks. Bane knocked his back as if he was grimly determined to drown in it, then stood and slapped some credits on the table. "See you around, Fett," he said curtly, before exiting the booth, stalking out the main door, and fading into the stinking Nal Hutta evening.

Jango frowned briefly and sipped his ale, settling back to wait for his meal to arrive. 

* * *

There was still an hour to go before Jango's launch slot, and he was giving serious consideration to simply returning to _Slave 1_. The _Harbor_ was getting busier than Jango liked, with hunters and mercenaries, criminals and outlaws of every species taking up the tables and crowding around the bar. The drawback, of course, was the design of his ship. When the ship was sat on a planetside landing pad, the two bunks Jango had installed behind the cockpit stood vertical instead of flat, and Jango was a simple man who was subject to the laws of gravity. And crowded or not, the denizens of this particular bar knew him and his reputation well enough to leave him alone. 

Or at least, most of them did. 

". . . never any political activists on Galidraan." 

Jango froze as the words carried to his position, _Galidraan_ ringing like the after-effects of a concussion grenade in his ears. His hand reached for his helmet. 

"Set 'em up good and proper," slurred the unseen speaker. There was a pause, a gulp, and a click of glass on cheap plasteel as a woman's murmuring voice encouraged his bragging. "Once we had Fett's stupid group on site, it was easy enough to frame them. We just had to kill a few so-called innocent victims as proof, and the Jedi didn't even bother asking questions. Did our job for us! Watching 'em wipe out those True Mando bastards . . . you just gotta hit a Jedi's big bleeding heart and sense of justice, and they're easier to manipulate than . . ." 

Any words that might have followed were cut off as Jango slammed the man's head into the table. "Death Watch," Jango growled, the vocoder flattening his voice into something a little more mechanical. 

The Togruta pilot sitting beside the braggart flinched, then politely cleared her throat. "Ah. Excuse me. As I doubt this job is going to pan out, I'll be leaving." 

Jango nodded brusquely, paying her only enough attention to track her departure. His hand gripping the man's short hair, Jango raised the drunk's head and thumped his face back down into the table. "Now. I have some questions, and you're going to answer them." 

The muffled response sounded like an insult. 

"Let me try again," Jango purred into the man's ear. "I don't have time for you to play coy, and I don't have much use for you alive. What do you know about Galidraan?" 

Slipping a hidden knife from under his armor, Jango rested the tip against the back of the man's neck. The man stilled, not quite drunk enough to risk killing himself on Jango's blade if he moved. 

"I'm waiting," Jango hinted. 

Judging from the shallow, rapid breathing of the man pinned under his hands, he was close to cracking. Hidden behind his visor, Jango curled his lip in disgust. Death Watch. Brave enough in groups, but take one away from their fellow fanatics and they crumbled like dry bread. 

Idly, Jango pressed the knife down an extra hair's width. A bead of blood welled up where metal met flesh, and the man under him squeaked. 

"Okay! Okay, I'll talk!" 

Jango lifted the knife, fastidiously wiping it on the other man's clothes before re-sheathing it. Tightening his hold on the other man's hair, Jango dragged the man back into a sitting position. "Talk." 

The man was a mess. There was blood on his face from the impact with the table, and his eyes were watering from the pressure on his scalp.

"Hey!" 

Jango didn't turn, but he lifted his head to show he was listening to the voice from behind the bar. 

"There’s a clean-up fee if you kill him in here," the bartender reminded him. "Take him out back." 

"Thanks for the advice," Jango said coolly, and he yanked the man to his feet. "Come on. You and I are going to have a little chat. In private." 

The drunken man groaned out a protest, but the alcohol in his veins meant that he had little chance of resisting Jango's strength. 

* * *

". . . and the Governor gave us a ship and Tor Viszla took us off Galidraan and that's all I know, I swear!" 

At least the man hadn't tried to swear by truth, honor and vision. Death Watch had no honor, as far as Jango was concerned, and they wouldn't know truth if it bit them in the ass. Still, enough of the story matched with what Jango knew that he was satisfied he'd been given as much of the story as the man knew. Including the bits about the Jedi. 

The silence must have grated on the man. "What are you going to do with me?" 

"Like I said. I don't have much use for you alive." 

Jango's blaster fired, once. 

* * *

With rack after rack of half-grown infants in clear tubes wheeling overhead, Jango held out his arms for the squalling infant that Nala Se delicately passed to him. "He's so small," Jango marveled, instinctively tucking the baby against his unarmored chest and bouncing him gently. The wails began to taper off as Boba looked up at his father with wide, unfocused eyes that now held Jango's whole galaxy in them. 

"As requested, this one is unaltered," Nala Se said, frowning faintly at Boba. "He has not been modified for greater obedience, and he will age normally for your species. Do you wish to have him trained with the others?" 

A new cry replaced Boba's, and Jango glanced up to where the scientists had extracted the first of the test batch. Indifferent gray hands cleaned, weighed, measured, and tagged the tiny clone, utterly ignoring his screaming as they deposited him in a padded metal box and went to decant the next. Jango subconsciously pulled Boba closer. "No," Jango said firmly. "I'll raise him myself." 

Nala Se performed the Kaminoan equivalent to a shrug. "Very well. Did you wish to see the remaining clones decanted?" 

Abruptly, Jango wanted nothing more than to be away from this closed-in, sterile facility. "No. I'm returning to my rooms." Without bothering to wait for Nala Se's reply, he turned on his heel and marched away, his infant son still cradled gently in his arms. At least in his suite, there was a window for Boba to look out of.


	2. Understanding is a Three-Edged Sword

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jango is smart enough to check sources and learns some truths he didn't expect.

"I hear you need a slicer." 

Jango examined the woman standing lazily on the other side of the table. The dim light of the Coruscant bar threw shadows on her face that made it difficult to read, an effect that was probably intentional if she was smart enough to find him. Leaning back to meet her eyes, Jango's armor creaked a little where repairs to the underlayer had necessitated newer, less well worn parts. "Oh? And where did you hear that?" 

"Oh, word gets around." The Twi'lek bent forward a little more, in what was either a terrible attempt at an intimidation tactic or an effort to prove her sincerity. The little smile curving her lips didn't do much to narrow the options down. 

"Right. And how good a slicer are you?" 

There was a hint of surprise in her eyes, and she straightened a little at the terse wording. "Good enough. I've been operating for six years, and they haven't caught me - or my clients - yet." 

Jango lifted an eyebrow, conceding a touch of respect for that particular achievement. "Any specialties? Commercial, industrial, political, military?" 

Her smile sharpened. "All of the above and a few sub-specialties, but most of my work's been in the industrial and commercial sectors." 

"Hmmm." Jango glanced aside, catching his own reflection in the shine of his helmet on the table beside him. "All right, sit down. Let's talk." 

The woman's smile edged into a flinty kind of triumph as she swayed into the chair with a grace that spoke of either combat training or dance practice. "Talk?" 

It was Jango's turn to lean forward now. "There's a few things I need you to slice for me, but I'm only giving you the first. Call it . . . a test run." 

Again, that flicker of surprise, but there was a hard intelligence in the woman's eyes that had led Jango to give her that chance in the first place. "All right. But before we talk price, I have a few terms that I won't budge on." 

Jango nodded. "Let's hear them." 

She inhaled, opened her mouth, then closed it as she swallowed whatever she had been about to begin with. "One. I won't work against former employers. If I'm bought, I stay bought. If you ask me to slice into their data, I'll tell you up front, and if you ask me what data they were looking for, I won't tell you." 

"That's fair, if you do the same for me." 

"Two. Nothing that could directly cause harm to children. I'll give you the maintenance times for the trains, but I won't derail one." 

Jango fought not to snarl. "I'm Mandalorian. We don't hurt kids." In his mind's eye he saw Boba at the window of a train, screaming as he was thrown to the floor, while the train bucked and twisted like an injured eopie as it crashed off the rails. 

The woman's shoulders relaxed. "Three. I'm not selling - or giving - you anything but my slicing skills." 

Oh. _Oh._ That explained the posturing, the surprise he'd seen. She'd been testing him. "I'm not interested in anything except your ability to get my information." 

She looked at him properly then, and her mouth twisted into bemused acceptance. "For once, I think I believe that." 

"Thanks," Jango said dryly. "Do you have a name I can call you by?"

"Call me Giza." 

"Giza. Now, the job. Do you have a set pay scale, or do you want to hear what you'll be hitting for me first?" 

"Tell me first," she decreed. "Rule one, remember?" 

Jango chuckled. "I remember. First, I want some population and crime statistics for a very specific time on one specific planet, in as much detail as you can find . . ." 

* * * 

Two days later, Jango was in a part of Coruscant he'd never visited before. Everyone knew that the planet was a metal shell, city melding with city until there was nothing but buildings, and then trampling over itself to rise higher and higher. 

Everyone, apparently, would have been wrong. 

On the outside, the Green Belt was just another piece of city. But two levels down was a broad open space, sunlight fed down by a complex system of mirrors that turned to follow Coruscant's star. Actual plants grew here, hundreds of miles from the Senate - mostly food crops, locked away from hungry natives, but the miles upon miles of oxygen-generation zones were open to the public. A discreet sign advertised that there were multiple other green belt zones across Coruscant, living backup in case the planet's massive mechanical air filters failed. 

The air tasted fresher here than anywhere else he'd been on Coruscant, and the lawn Jango was sitting on felt softer than some bunks he'd slept on. Even Boba seemed to appreciate it, Jango's son leaning against the concealed armor on his father's thigh as he batted at the grass that surrounded them. Jango chuckled at Boba's fascination, watching as his child plopped face first into the soft grass and rolled over with a giggle. 

Jango closed his eyes for a moment as he realized that this was Boba's first experience with grass and with living plants in general. Kamino, water world that it was, had very little greenery that thrived in air. Perhaps he should take a plant back to Kamino, so that Boba could have something that wasn't black, white, or durasteel in his life. 

Here, where there was barely a hint of black or white or metal, people from all walks of life wandered the Green Belt zone. Other parents out with their children, university students gathering in little groups under the trees, couples walking along the duracrete pathways between squares of greenery, elders basking in the sunlight, a lilac-skinned Twi'lek dipping her fingers into the artificial pond. Jango had chosen a spot near the edge of the zone, his back to the brightly painted duracrete wall and good sight-lines on most approaches. That also meant that people could see _him,_ but Boba was better cover than all the disguises in the universe. Few people would look at a single father with a six-month-old son and think 'bounty hunter'. 

Even fewer would think 'bounty hunter' when said father was trying to stop his kid from putting things in his mouth. 

"Easy, little one," Jango chided, removing the blade of grass that Boba was making a determined effort to chew. "These plants aren't for eating." Boba gave him a sunny smile, and Jango couldn't help returning it despite his feeble attempt at discipline. His kid was going to be a menace. 

Looking up and away from him, Boba gurgled a welcome to the woman approaching them. It was the lilac Twi'lek from over by the pond, and her face was familiar. 

"I almost didn't recognize you out of the armor," Giza said, sitting down a little more than an arm's length away. "Is this your son? He takes after you." 

Jango nodded, quietly pleased that his loose shirt and trousers were successfully concealing the form-fitting body armor he wore under his unassuming clothes. "This is Boba." 

"Hello, Boba," Giza said softly, her hand twitching as if she wanted to reach out to him. Jango nodded to her, and she smiled back and held out her hand to the baby. 

Boba, curious about his new admirer, gurgled and grabbed Giza's hand to help him sit up. Jango idly shifted his leg to help his son stay upright, watching Giza's face as he did so. "Do you have the data?" 

"Straight to business? Okay. Yes, I have it." Giza reluctantly extracted herself from Boba's grip and placed a data chip in the grass between them, cupping it protectively under her palm. "Payment first." 

Wordlessly, Jango passed over a pouch of clean Republic credits. With the fee for finding Komari Vosa combined with the amount he was being paid as the clones' template, Jango could have retired twenty times over and still been rich at the end of it. Paying Giza's fees was practically pocket change. 

Cautiously, Giza opened the pouch one-handed and glanced inside. Jango had added a bonus for prompt delivery, as they had arranged, and Giza nodded in satisfaction at the amount before she released the data chip. 

Slipping the chip into a portable datapad, Jango scrolled through the data. It was neatly organized and labeled, and contained even more detail than he'd asked for. "Thanks. This is good." 

Giza's shoulders relaxed, her lekku rippling faintly. "Good to know." And then the businesswoman was back, her eyes narrowing. "You've passed my tests. Have I passed yours?" 

That boldness would get her far, if she managed to stay alive. "You have," Jango agreed, lifting a pouting Boba onto his lap. "Interested in part two?" 

Giza flashed a sharp smile. "Only if it's more challenging than the last one." 

* * *

"Now _that_ was the kind of challenge I was looking for," Giza said happily, sliding into the chair beside Jango and setting down a monstrosity of a technicolor cocktail in front of herself. She'd chosen the meeting place this time, which meant that Jango was back in full armor. Coruscant's under-city held a thousand places like this, bars where the law knew better than to go and where Jango's beskar barely stood out in the mishmash of species carrying an arsenal's worth of weapons. 

"The Senate's systems more to your taste, then?" 

"Oh, much more," Giza chirped, swapping two data chips for another bag of credits. "You're lucky you hired me, you know. There were the official reports, and there were the unofficial reports, and then there were the _original_ reports. Most wouldn't have found the last."

Jango tensed. "Original reports?" 

"That's what I said. Hidden better than a senator's porn stash, those files." She knocked back a hearty swig of the brightly alcoholic liquid she'd brought, and Jango's estimation of her common sense dropped by another notch. Still she was good, and even if someone made her talk it was all information that they'd expect him to search for anyway. 

"I saved the best for last." Not trusting the bar to be free of listening ears, Jango handed her a sheet of flimsi. 

Giza read it once, read it again, and her lekku wiggled gleefully even as she tried to get her facial expression under control. "Oh, Jango. You do know how to make a woman happy." 

* * *

It took Giza nearly a full week to get back to him, this time. 

"Jango? Are you here?" Giza called, her voice bouncing around old durasteel walls and towering metal shelves. "This old warehouse is spooky!" 

Jango spared a brief amused thought to wonder if she was scared of ghosts, before emerging from behind a stack of old, empty crates. "It suits me." 

Giza jumped, going to one knee as she pulled a knife from her boot. She relaxed as she saw his armor, and Jango felt a sudden urge to lecture her on proper personal safety. 'Don't assume that someone wearing armor is the person you think it is,' he would have said. 'Wait until you see their face.' 

But Giza wasn't Boba, wasn't his child to raise or his student to teach. "I take it that the Jedi Temple had better security than your last two tasks?" 

"Of course it did," Giza said in exasperation as she re-sheathed her knife and rose to her feet. "You knew it, I knew it. But there's levels and levels of security, and what you wanted wasn't that deep. Fortunately." Giza rubbed her arms as if the abandoned munitions warehouse held more of a chill than the deep alleys of Coruscant.

"How do you know that there wasn't anything under the levels you sliced through?" 

"Because the Jedi are meticulous with their record-keeping. Database of current and former Jedi here. Mission reports there. Council minutes and decisions somewhere else. History . . . let's say I'm glad you didn't need me to go too far back into the Archives." 

She threw him the data chips, trusting that he would pay her, and for a moment Jango wanted to tell her not to trust people like him. Instead, he tossed her a considerably heavier pouch than the last two times. "Completion bonus. And . . ." He hesitated, then forged ahead. "Go back to commercial espionage, Giza. You're in over your head on jobs like these." 

Her mouth twisted wryly. "In that case, I hope I never see you again. No offense." 

"None taken." 

* * *

Back in the room he'd rented for himself and his son, Jango shut down the Kaminoan nurse droid, set his helmet aside, and went to check on Boba. His child was asleep, tiny breaths making his little chest rise and fall, and Jango felt an echo of the same feelings he'd had when Nala Se had first handed Boba to him. Boba was his heart and soul, and he would protect his boy with everything he had. If he had to shoot half the galaxy to build a better world for Boba to live in, so be it. 

Brushing one blaster-calloused fingertip over Boba's impossibly soft nose, Jango smiled down at the sleeping baby. "You're going to surpass me, one day," he whispered. 

Unaware of his father's prediction, Boba slept on. With a last look at him, Jango gathered up the new data chips and went into his own room to run them through his anti-virus protocols. Either Giza was better at hiding stuff than Jango was at finding it, or she was honest. Jango was - for a change - inclined towards the latter. 

The slicer's neat organization was worth every credit of the bonus Jango had given her. It was all too easy to cross-reference documents, chronologically and by origin. The last pieces of the puzzle fell into place, and the results were damning. Here, in front of him, was the truth of Galidraan. 

A surge in violent deaths among men, women, and children who had no criminal records, at the exact time that the True Mandalorians and Death Watch had been on the planet. The population and crime statistics backed up the Death Watch lackey's confession on Nar Shaddaa - that they had murdered innocents purely to frame Jango's warriors. It could never have been one of his people. They'd all had too much honor to deliberately slay those who had never hurt them, and if one of the True Mandalorians had gone that far, Jango would have killed them himself. 

Here, the Governor's false cry for help to the Jedi. The records matched here, Senate and Jedi alike. The blame laid on the True Mandalorians for killing political activists that had never existed. 

There, where it all went wrong. 

His own words, rejecting the Jedi's offer of surrender, because where was the honor in taking the blame for a crime you knew nothing of? Mandalore was not part of the Republic, and the Jedi had no authority over him. Most of his memories of that time were blurred by adrenaline and battle madness, but he still recalled the loud-mouthed girl who'd been beside the chief Jedi, both oddly familiar figures in his mind's eye. 

He skipped the reports describing the deaths. 

But then . . . then, it got interesting. The Jedi reports, filed by a man named Dooku, matched the original ones that Giza had fished up from the depths of the Senate servers. The _official_ ones, though? That was where it changed. A word altered here, a change in punctuation there, and a document that laid out the Jedi's regrets for their hasty actions became a proud statement of victory. Why? Why bother to amend records that no-one would ever bother to look at? To hide the fact that the Jedi had been used and lied to for the sake of one man's revenge and another's political ambitions? 

Jango suspected he would never find out why. Turning to the personnel files, he called up the one belonging to the man who'd written the majority of the report to the Jedi Council. Master Dooku, who had led the party of Jedi who had killed Jango's people at Galidraan.

Master Dooku, who had a shockingly familiar face. Who'd had a padawan, Komari Vosa. 

_Soon you will be my slave, bounty hunter,_ she whispered in his memory, and Jango shuddered. 

Dooku . . . was Tyranus. 

Tyranus had killed his people.


	3. Countdown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we meet the mad Jedi, and Jango tries (and fails) not to think about certain things.

The prisoner struggled in her Force-nullifying cuffs as Jango hauled her through the prison doors, trying to land a kick on the bounty hunter. Jango dodged with an ease born of long experience, tugging hard on the cuffs to unbalance the woman. "Stop that," he ordered in exasperation. It was too late when he slapped those cuffs on her on Florrum, and it was far too late for her to get away now.

"Bounty hunter scum! You'll pay for this, my family won't allow me to stay locked up! I'll kill you one day, I . . ."

She stopped as the heavy doors sealed behind him with a hiss, her shoulders dropping in a show of submission that Jango didn't trust in the slightest. With the cuffs behind her back still held tight in his gauntleted fist, Jango towed her over to the intake desk of the Citadel. 

The guard stationed behind the reinforced, transparisteel-fortified desk looked up without interest. "Name?" 

"Mine or hers?" Jango parried.

"Yours." 

"Jango Fett." 

The guard looked down at his desk, his typing unhampered by the three fingers on each hand. "Ah. Fett, Jango, on behalf of the Luka Sene. Yes. Prisoner's name?" 

"Vizheny Krin." 

The guard nodded, presumably because that matched what he had been told to expect. "Species?" 

"Miralukan." 

The guard typed something more, and two armed guards stepped through a security door to Jango's right. A sheet of flimsi extruded from the printer on the intake guard's side of the desk, and the guard neatly ripped it off and pushed it through the slot at the bottom of the transparisteel window. "Your transfer papers and proof of intake. Digital copies will be sent to your ship. We will take the prisoner from here." 

"No," Jango said bluntly. "I have a job to see through, and I want those cuffs back. I'm going with you." 

The guard, showing more animation that he'd exhibited up until this point, sat up in his chair and eyed Jango. A bounty hunter was a significant risk to have wandering about, especially when Jango could have been paid to free one of the prisoners. Granted, Jango hadn't, and he'd use a less obvious strategy if he _had_ been, but the possibility existed. 

Jango waited patiently, one hand still on the cuffs. Krin waited just as patiently, and he suspected that she was just waiting for the handover before she made a break for it. 

"We have our own," the guard finally said, dismissively. 

One of his counterparts coughed, and muttered something into her comlink. Jango's enhanced audio pickups filtered the words 'not charged' out of her voice, and a smile flickered onto his helmet-shielded face. 

". . . however, there is no point in undertaking additional risk during the transfer. If you wish to confirm that the prisoner is secure before leaving, you may follow. _If_ you leave your pistols behind. You may retrieve them after the guards escort you back." 

Jango was torn between fury and contempt for a few brief seconds before wrestling himself back under control. Did this man even understand what he was asking, telling a Mandalorian to give up his weapons? And was he really so naive as to think that the blasters on Jango's belt were the only ones he had? 

The answer to both was probably no, Jango decided as a third prison guard joined the two on his right. The guard wasn't seeing a Mandalorian warrior, he was seeing a common bounty hunter. The request, to him, was little more than a token to cover his ass if some superior questioned him later. Two of the guards moved in to take charge of Krin, shutting down her attempt at escaping as if they hadn't even noticed it as Jango stepped back.

"Fine," Jango said, managing to school his voice into something approaching neutral. One after another, Jango withdrew the safety-locked pistols from their holsters and pushed them handle-first through the security slot. "Keep them with the paperwork. I'll be back to collect them later." 

The third guard attached themselves grimly to his side. Well, if Jango happened to want another blaster, there was one right next to him.

* * *

With the Force-binding cuffs back in his hands and the three prison guards unsubtly clustered around him, Jango let himself be ushered back down the corridor. Vizheny Krin was safely locked away and unlikely to ever get out alive, and Jango felt a dull satisfaction at the knowledge. He had little use for Force users of any stripe, but those who had fallen to the Dark the way that Komari Vosa had needed to be put down like the rabid strills they were. It was a shame that Krin's family connections had prevented that. Still, if they'd been able to do so themselves, they'd never have bothered calling Jango in. Sometimes the Jedi-slayer reputation came in handy. 

As he passed one locked cell, the light by the side of the door began to flash frantically, and Jango's escort sighed. "Sento Drais again. Probably wants to babble more gibberish at us." 

"We'll deal with this," said one of the two who'd brought Krin to her cell. "Wait here." 

The door hissed open, and Jango caught a glimpse of a Human man with dark, wild hair sitting neatly on the bench at the back of the cell. The heaviest of the three guards moved in to block the doorway. "What is it, Drais?" 

"Is the Mandalorian there?" Drais asked. His voice quavered like an old man and rasped like an addict who'd spent forty years smoking death sticks, but the words made Jango freeze in place.

Jango's mouth didn't give him a chance to think. "I'm here." 

The guards glared at him. 

"Ah! Good. I remember you, you know. All of the yous. I asked for you. So many of you, and sometimes those beings with long necks. Rain. It’s always raining. You’re going to die, over and over. The big yous and the little yous. All in blue, and they all belong to you. All in red, with darkness in your heads. Tick-tick-tick."

The words clearly meant nothing to the three guards, but Jango tensed. The clones, the Kaminoans, even the fact that the cadets wore blue and would graduate to red as they got older. "Darkness in their heads? What do you mean?" Jango demanded roughly.

"Just that." Drais hummed, low and unbalanced. "I see other things, too. I see a void at the heart of the Senate that sucks in everything and is always hungry. I see all the little children in the Jedi Temple lying dead. Lots of you in white, all dark, and led by pain. So much pain and fear."

Ice struck like lightning down Jango's spine, and he took a step forward. "When?" he growled. 

"When is when? When is now? Here and gone and back again. I can barely see the now." Drais' eyes locked onto Jango in a moment of sudden, shocking sanity. "Oh. I'm so sorry. You were at Galidraan. I saw you there. You killed my friend." 

Ice was replaced by flashfire, and the Jedi in the cell flinched despite Jango being too angry to move. "You and your friends killed my people. All of them," Jango gritted out. "They deserved everything I did to them." 

_(the feeling of a neck snapping under hands slippery with blood, berserker rage driving him to avenge Myles against the robed figures, the Jedi who thought they had every right in the galaxy to impose their way on him . . .)_

From the way the Jedi shuddered on his bench, he'd seen the memory too. 

"Yes, we did kill them. I'm sorry," Drais said again, for a moment sounding like the man he must have once been. "I do not ask forgiveness." 

The words _I'm not going to give it_ lined up on Jango's tongue, and he swallowed them back. He could hold a grudge all he wanted, but he'd had his revenge on Tor Viszla and the Governor, and they were the ones at the heart of it. "I found the data. The Jedi were used by the Governor just like we were," Jango said through gritted teeth. "Death Watch hated us both. Congratulations. You did their dirty work for them." 

"Ah. Did . . ." 

The pain in the Jedi's voice struck an answering note in what was left of Jango's soul. "Go on. Ask." 

"Those who were with me - did they . . ." 

"Dooku and his padawan Vosa both fell to the Dark," Jango said bluntly. "The rest, I don't know." He hadn't wanted to know. 

"Oh, my poor friend." The Jedi bowed his head, seemingly prepared to go into permanent mourning. 

"Wait," Jango said. He was a Mandalorian. The younglings in the Temple might be Jedi, but most of them would be too young to have even been alive when the Jedi slaughtered the True Mandalorians. "Galidraan's done and gone, it can't be changed. But those kids? I'm not going to let that happen. Tell me how to stop it." 

Drais lifted his head again. Somehow, even through the helmet, he locked eyes with Jango. "Skywalker's mother. Save her. She is the key." 

Without taking his eyes off Drais, Jango nodded. 

* * *

The elevator ride back up to the entrance level passed in silence. When the guards had re-locked Drais' cell, they'd all taken to giving him unsubtle sideways looks. As far as Jango was concerned, if they didn't have the guts to speak up, he wasn't going to reward their curiosity. 

Finally, with only a handful of levels to go, the female guard spoke up. "I have to know. What in Mishikla's name was all that?" 

Huh. Maybe one of them had a few dregs of courage after all. "Maybe you should listen closer to what he's saying," Jango suggested. "Might not be as much nonsense as you think." 

The woman frowned, but in a way that suggested that she was at least thinking about it. 

"How long has he been here?" 

The guard who'd glued themselves to Jango's elbow shrugged. "The Pyke Syndicate brought him in about five years ago. He was already cracked in the head, staring at nothing and making weird noises. The cells down there are Force-shielded, and once we got him inside, he calmed down. Sometimes he's lucid, sometimes he just talks in riddles." 

Whatever their Force shielding was made from, they needed to double it if they actually wanted to cut Sento Drais off from the Force. Jango had never paid a great deal of attention to Jedi mysticism, but he'd heard some of them could tell the future. No wonder the man had been driven insane. 

Jango retrieved his pistols from the guard behind the intake desk, slotting them back into his holsters and letting the weight of them soothe the awareness of their brief absence. He picked up the paperwork with more reluctance, but if he wanted to prove to the Luka Sene that he'd delivered Krin as required, he'd need it. 

Settling back into the pilot seat of _Slave 1_ , Jango closed his eyes against the mad Jedi's prophecy. _'I see all the little children in the Jedi Temple lying dead.'_ In his mind's eye, he could see the little bodies in their robes, limbs sprawled gracelessly across stone floors, the light gone from their eyes. 

The one staring sightlessly at him had Boba's face. 

Jango shivered, then opened his eyes and hit the start-up switches a little harder than he needed to. It was easy to hate the Jedi when they were arrogant and distant and faceless in his memories. It was less so when he could see the little ones dead because of his clones, when he remembered Drais' grief and knew that the Jedi was just another man. 

Drais, who had been brought to the Citadel at around the same time as Dooku had recruited Jango as the clones' template. It could always be coincidence. 

But Jango didn't believe in coincidence.

* * *

Thirty-six copies of Jango's younger face turned up to him, lit by artificial lights in the bare white Kaminoan training room and dressed in child-sized training armor. Each wore a near-identical frown of concentration as he demonstrated the next kick in the sequence. "The key is to hit them at a sensitive point," Jango barked at them as they tried it for themselves. "Up here are the kidneys, in humans and several other species! If you aim your heel at these points here, I guarantee that your opponent _will_ feel it. Higher, CC-2238, their tailbone is not your target!" 

The cadet, who was three and a half years old and looked seven, lifted his foot again and kicked higher. Jango nodded in grudging approval. They'd be drilled in this and other hand-to-hand moves every day until it was second nature, and then he'd add more to their training schedule. 

One of the cadets overbalanced at the far end of the room, and Jango clapped his hands sharply. "Hold!" he commanded. The cadets scrambled back into parade rest, some of the more anxious ones shuffling a little. Turning deliberately away from the unsteady clone, he beckoned a different one forward. "CC-2224. Come here and demonstrate that kick for your platoon." 

The identified cadet and his sparring partner came forward, and Jango watched carefully as the two clones settled into position. CC-2224 moved smoothly, his bare heel slamming into the back of his partner's padded armor. 

"Good. Hold it. See this spot, where his heel is? That's where you want to be aiming. Also, take a look at his stance. He's holding all his weight on one leg, and not relying on anything but himself. CC-2221 could walk away now and he'd still be balanced." Jango let the clone hold his position for a few more seconds, then nodded. "Good. Leg down, back to your place. All right, boys, I want you alternating kicks with your sparring partners, and make sure to practice with both legs! You never know where the enemy will be coming from. Go!" 

As the room began to resonate with the muffled sound of softened blows, Jango abandoned his place in front and began to walk among the cadets to dispense advice. 

"Counterbalance your leg with your body - you're leaning too far." 

"That's not a kick, cadet, that's a flop. Put some power into it!" 

"Don't drop your guard like that, if you're close enough for this kick then you're inside their reach. Arms up!" 

A few were starting to get sloppy, their kicks growing less precise as their tired muscles stopped responding as easily. "Push through it!" Jango yelled. "You enemies will not give you time for a sit-down and a cup of caf! Who's in charge, you or your body?" 

The kicks tightened up, but it wouldn't last long at their age. Despite the frequent endurance training the clones underwent, there was only so much young muscles could do. They needed to be stretched, not damaged. 

Jango wandered back to the front of the room and clapped again. "Hold!" 

Little feet clattered to the ground, and the cadets might have been tired but they could still pull off perfect parade rest. Jango wondered for a moment if it had been hard-wired in, then dismissed the thought as quickly as he could. 

"That's all for today. Any questions, cadets?" 

"Sir, what if we're facing something bigger than we are and we don't know its weak points?" once called out.

"Good question, CC-2224. Most things that will come after you will have joints. Aim for those - the kick you've just been doing is a good one for taking out the backs of the knees. Anyone else?" 

Silence met his question, and Jango nodded. "Go shower. I'll see you again for this the day after tomorrow." 

As the cadets filed out, a Kaminoan swayed gently through the door. "Jango," she said calmly. 

"Jana Te," Jango greeted. "This had better be quick, I have another class for the oldest cadets in fifteen minutes." 

"Of course," she soothed. "We have noticed that you do not teach the youngest clones who are deemed fit for physical training. We wonder if you would perhaps extend your lessons to them?" 

Jango's shoulders tensed. "The two-year-olds?" 

Jana Te blinked slowly. "Yes. They are at an equivalent developmental age of four, and we wish to offer an improved product." 

Jango tried to tell himself that what he felt was anger at the Kaminoan's implication that he couldn't work their ages out for himself. "Not worth my time," he growled. "I signed off on the training program, even your lot should be able to handle that. I'll take them at two and a half. No younger." 

"As you wish." Jana Te bowed her head gracefully, and Jango turned to consult the training plan for his next group. 

His concentration was broken only seconds later by a voice from out in the corridor. _"Get off him!"_

The words were muffled through the walls, but the intent was unmistakable.


	4. Parallax

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jango accidentally names Cody, and Fox stands up for the truth even when it might mean making enemies. Also, Jango takes the next step down the road the mad Jedi set out for him.

"Get off him!" 

The words were muffled through the walls, but the intent was unmistakable. Jango dropped the datapad, sprinting through the door and into the corridor outside. 

Battle-trained eyes took in the chaos and picked apart the situation. Boba (not Boba, a two-year-old clone) stood half-crouched against the wall with a bloody nose, his nearby squad still in two neat lines and frozen as if unable to pass the two cadets facing off in the hallway. Scattered around were the young platoon who'd just left Jango's training room, and lined up on the other side of the door were the clones he was due to teach next. It made for a crowded space, but they'd left plenty of room around the two boys in the middle. 

_All in blue, and they all belong to you._

Between the young clone and an older one - one of the first batches, if Jango was correct - stood CC-2224, blood pouring down his face and still snarling. The older clone held his fists clenched, his eyes flickering between his younger opponent and the onlookers. 

The older cadet lifted his right fist, and CC-2224 moved. Left foot up to sweep the intended punch towards the older cadet instead of towards himself, foot down, stance solid and centered, right foot up to deliver a perfect copy of the kick Jango had made him demonstrate earlier. Aimed straight into the older clone's kidneys, it dropped the cadet to his knees.

Jango felt a surge of inappropriate pride. _Mandokarla,_ something whispered inside him, and he shook off the thought. They were clones, engineered for obedience. That was all. 

"You, you, and you. Over here, now." 

CC-2224 strode over as if he hadn't even noticed he was injured, despite the blood that coated the left side of his face. The kid with the bleeding nose moved more cautiously, but he took his indicated spot anyway. Finally, the oldest cadet shuffled over, looking mutinous next to the expressionless faces of the two younger clones. 

"Sir, I . . ." 

"Silence!" Jango snapped at the oldest cadet, turning his attention to the clones who had watched the fight. Most of the older clones looked away, but one met his eyes without fear. "You. CC-1010. Did you witness the entire incident?" 

The cadet straightened to perfect attention. "Yes, sir." 

"Report." 

CC-1010's eyes flickered to the rest of his platoon. "Sir. Platoon Esk-19 were awaiting orders to enter the training room when the junior cadets passed by. One of the cadets requested to train with us, and CC-1053 declined. The junior cadet persisted, and CC-1053 . . . took hold of the cadet and injured his nose. At this time, Platoon Jenth-3 emerged from the training room and CC-2224 took exception to CC-1053's method of resolving the situation, requesting that the cadet be released and then forcibly removing the cadet from CC-1053's grip. CC-1053 shoved CC-2224 into an open doorway, which caused his facial injury. CC-2224 stepped between the junior cadet and CC-1053, and kicked CC-1053 in the back. Sir." 

There was no murmuring among the young clones, but Jango could see the narrowed eyes flickering towards CC-1010 from his platoon. Orders or no orders, CC-1010 had just dropped his platoon-mate in severe trouble. 

Despite that, Jango was quietly impressed. The clone had four years of life experience at best ( _just like Boba_ ), and he'd already mastered passive-voice, neutral reporting. CC-1010 was surely destined for politics. 

He could read the story behind CC-1010's bland report. The little CT had been pestering the older clone, out of what Jango suspected was mischief rather than a true desire to train with a more advanced platoon, and CC-1053 had grabbed the kid and punched him to shut him up. 

A glance at the indicated door showed a sharp edge painted in red human blood at the point where CC-2224 must have hit it. That was some shove, to cause that much damage. 

Reluctantly, Jango faced the conclusion he'd hoped never to think about. They were raising these kids as soldiers, and aggression and violence were always going to be their first resort if they kept training them like this. Mandalorian children at least had parents to give them an idea of life outside battle - these ones had the Kaminoans, who mostly treated them like things; their trainers, who primarily did the same; and Jango, who knew himself to be hardly any better. 

Taking a deep breath through his nose, Jango raised his voice to project to all of them. "There are more battlefields than those you will find in a war. In war, you have to rely on those you're fighting with, because they are the ones who will keep you alive. Deliberately injuring a fellow soldier is cause for severe disciplinary action, and for a commander, it shows a failure to properly handle those who may one day be under your command. Leadership is more than shouting orders - it's looking after those you are responsible for, on and off the battlefield. Sometimes, your troops are going to be insubordinate, and physical violence is not the way to handle that. 

"CC-1053, there is no place for a bully among leaders. Effective immediately, you are permanently demoted to CT. Perhaps learning to work with your fellow soldiers will curb you of the desire to punish them for your own failings." 

The rage in the former CC's eyes hinted otherwise, but he managed to grit out, "Yes, sir." 

"CT-8834, I recommend that you not try to antagonize people in the future." 

"Yes, sir," CT-8834 said, high-pitched child's voice trembling just enough that Jango thought he'd taken the lesson to heart. 

"CC-2224, you have good instincts, gar ven'mar'eyi kote. Protecting your troops is something you will need when you have battlefield command. However, you too must remember that starting a fight is not always the best way to protect them." 

"Yes, sir," CC-2224 said seriously, and Jango could practically see the words being tucked away in the young clone's brain for further consideration. Yes, this one would go far. 

"CC-1010, take CC-2224 and CT-8834 to the medical wing. CT-1053, report to Jana Te for reassignment. The rest of Esk-19, I want you in the training room. I can see you need to learn more than I thought. Dismissed!" 

As though he had flipped a switch, the frozen cadets sprang into action. Jango stayed where he was, an unmoving rock among the purposeful swirl of small bodies, and he watched as CC-1010 and his charges headed towards Medical. Just before they turned the corner, CT-8834 sneaked his hand into CC-2224's, the same way Boba would reach for Jango's own hand when he was nervous. 

Gritting his teeth, Jango headed into the next lesson. 

* * *

The search for Skywalker was going slowly. Drais hadn't even hinted which planet they might be on, let alone where to find their mother. All he had was the name, against a galaxy full of sentient beings. 

It wasn't a traditional Mandalorian name, but with the Mandalorian habit of adopting those willing to swear the Resol'nare, he couldn't rule out his own people. It was more likely than not that the owner was human, but that still didn't preclude a being from another species who'd renamed themselves. Skywalker. A good, strong name that a warrior would not be ashamed of. It could even be the call sign of a pilot. 

Sighing, Jango put aside the search and turned back to combing through the data Giza had retrieved for him back on Coruscant. He'd been through every bit of it in the last five years, staring at files until the lettering blurred and he couldn't remember whether he'd already cross-referenced it or not. 

Clenching his teeth, Jango closed the familiar mission reports and opened the Jedi personnel files. Dooku's first, as always, searching for any scraps of information that might give him an advantage in their deal. Then Vosa's, reminding himself over and over that she was dead and could no longer threaten him. 

Yoda. Windu, Koon, Mundi. Back to Dooku. 

Once again, Jango skimmed the section on the former Jedi's previous padawans. Komari Vosa. Qui-Gon Jinn. Rael Averross. 

Guided by an instinct that he only half understood, Jango did what he had never done before and tapped on Qui-Gon Jinn's name. The Jedi had been killed on Naboo . . . five years ago. 

A padawan called Obi-Wan Kenobi, who had been promoted to knighthood only days after his Master had died, and who had slain a dark Force-user. 

Obi-Wan Kenobi, whose padawan was Anakin _Skywalker._

Skywalker had been ten years old at the time the files had made their way into Jango's hands. And he had been born on . . .

Tatooine. 

"Found you," Jango breathed. 

From the direction of Boba's bedroom there came a creak, a snap, and a drawn-out crash of multiple items hitting the floor. Jango was up and out of his seat before the noise died down, any thought of desert planets evaporating out of his head. "Boba!" 

"Sorry, Dad!" his son called back. Jango skidded to a stop in front of the open door, his eyes taking in the minor chaos. A shelf that had previously been out of Boba's reach hung from a single support strut, scattering toys all over the orange rug that Jango had bought to bring a touch of color to Boba's room. Boba himself looked more sheepish than hurt, and he threw himself at Jango as he knelt amid the mess. 

Jango's arms went around Boba, his broad hands checking subtly for any injuries that Boba's clothes might have concealed, and he buried his nose in Boba's hair as he breathed in the familiar little-boy-smell. "You scared me there, Boba," Jango told him. "What if that shelf had hit you? You could have been hurt." 

"I wasn't!" Boba promised, hugging Jango tighter. "I won't do it again, I promise." 

"I'll hold you to that, Boba," Jango said sternly, releasing his son so that he could lean back and look Boba in the eyes. "We are Mandalorian, and Mandalorians keep their word." 

"Yes, Dad," Boba said with all the solemnity a four-year-old could muster. 

"Now, what were you trying to do?" 

Boba bit his lip and glanced aside. "I was trying to do pull-ups like the cadets, Dad." 

Ruefully, Jango admitted to himself that the Fett competitive spirit had bred true in Boba. "That's for the older cadets," he said gently. "Your muscles and bones aren't strong enough yet." 

"But they're three, and they can do it! I'm _four_!"

Three, and with the accelerated aging the Kaminoans had written into their genetic code, the size of six-year-olds. "Tell you what," Jango compromised. "I'll teach you to do push-ups, and we'll get you checked out to make sure you're not doing yourself any damage with them. When you turn five, we'll talk about pull-ups." 

Boba brightened like a little sun, and Jango smiled at his child's joy. For a moment, there was nothing but the two of them, and then unwelcome reality began to sidle back in. He would have to travel to Tatooine, and spend as long as he had to in finding Skywalker's mother. Boba was old enough to remember his absences now, and Jango was reluctant to leave him behind for too long. 

Although . . . Boba might be of help on this mission. They were trying to find a mother, after all. 

"Boba. How do you feel about a little trip in _Slave 1_?" 

If Boba's previous smile had been like the sun, this one lit him up like a nova. "I can go with you in the ship? Really?" 

"Really," Jango affirmed. "I'll help you pack. We're going to a desert planet, it's going to be hot."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Translations:**
> 
> Gar ven'mar'eyi kote - you will find glory


	5. Playing with Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Boba discovers that Tatooine is not a safe planet, and Jango has more in common with his target than an old acquaintance knows.

_Slave 1_ touched down in the heat of Mos Espa's afternoon, her hull glinting in the harsh sunlight. 

"Are we there now?" Boba demanded. 

"We are," Jango confirmed. Even with _Slave 1_ 's efficient hyperspace drive, two days from Kamino to Tatooine with a cranky young child in tow had not been one of his better ideas. 

Powering down the ship and unclipping his flight harness, Jango spent a precious few seconds to close his eyes and ready himself. Swinging himself neatly out of his seat, he unstrapped Boba from the modified passenger chair he'd adjusted to suit Boba's size and watched with a mixture of pride and exasperation as Boba rolled awkwardly to his feet. Well, children learned from bumps and bruises. It was part of growing up. "Boba, do you have your visor?" 

Boba dashed for his pack and rummaged through it for the EM-spectrum visor that would reduce Tatooine's glare down to something manageable for a child raised on ever-rainy Kamino. "I've got it here, Dad! Does this mean we're going out?" 

"It does. Leave your things here, they'll be safer on the ship. And drink some water before you go out." 

Jango followed his own advice, taking a long drink from the water provided by _Slave 1_ 's purifiers and securely fastening a canteen to his hip. Dehydration was as deadly as blaster fire on a desert world, and water more costly than alcohol. 

Jango took a firm grip on Boba's hand as they walked down the ramp and out into Mos Espa's main port. Sealing the ship behind him was a simple matter of a remote command from his gauntlet, one which activated the anti-theft defenses at the same time. 

Exiting the port brought waves of sound, movement, and smell rolling over them. Boba's nose wrinkled briefly, but his fascination with a world so utterly unlike Kamino proved an irresistible distraction. "Dad! Dad, are those cadets? In the brown robes, look!" 

Jango glanced over, already certain what he'd find. "They're Jawas, Boba. They scavenge old machinery and sell it to people. Always lock down your ship if you're somewhere that Jawas live, or you might come back to find everything gone but its skeleton." 

"Oh." There was a pause as Boba ruminated on that. "Dad, why are the clouds blue?" 

"Tatooine is a dry planet. They don't have clouds here. That's the open sky that you're seeing." 

"Wow," Boba breathed. "Oh, wow. What are those? They're bigger than aiwhas!" 

"Dewbacks. The people here use them for transport." 

With Boba chattering as they went, Jango led his son towards one of his more reliable contacts. Vartto owned a cantina near the slave quarters of Mos Espa, and the Devaronian wasn't above passing on a little gossip to an old friend. 

Jango could feel hidden eyes on them as they walked, and he watched for danger as he answered Boba's excited questions. Some were simply indulgent glances from people who liked kids, and others were assessing ones from those who added up the value of his armor, his weapons, and the price that a young and healthy boy might fetch at auction. 

A faint crackle of a cheap com unit somewhere to the side had Jango tightening his grip on Boba's hand. Boba read the signal as Jango had taught him, letting their conversation drift off, and Jango tapped Boba's hand twice with his thumb in approval. Around them, the roadside sellers tapered off as they headed further from Mos Espa's center, and the people around them became quieter and less visible. 

Only two turns away from Jango's intended destination, the bystanders faded away entirely, and a man whose eyes judged someone's worth by their monetary value stepped in front of him. 

"Well! If it isn't a Mandalorian!" said the shaved-headed Human, falsely cheerful. "We don't get too many of your kind around here. Are you looking for work?" 

"No." 

If Jango's terse answer had put the man off, he didn't show it. "Well, then. Maybe we can be friends anyway. What's your name?" 

"Jango Fett." 

The man laughed, his eyes colder than Hoth. "Nice try, but Jango Fett's been missing for the last five years. Who are you, really?" 

Jango tilted his head to one side. Clearly, he'd been away too long if his name alone didn't make the man back down. "Boba, novo gar sur'haai." 

"Speaking another language, outlander? That's not very polite." The man's eyes narrowed. "Isn't it, boys?" 

Another four emerged, each from different alleys. Two behind him, not even trying to be silent, and the wash of stench suggested that at least one was Gamorrean. "Not polite, boss." 

"We can do this the friendly way, or . . . well, my boys might have to earn their pay. Your armor might be worth a few wupiupi. That kid? A few more." 

Inwardly, Jango snarled. They dare threaten his armor? They dare threaten his _son_? He had only one word for them, and not the one the man wanted. "Daab."

_Down._

Boba, his eyes obediently screwed shut, flattened himself to the deck. 

The two thugs in front of Jango went down within seconds, their blaster shots going wide as their weapons fell from limp hands. He ducked, spun on one knee, and unloaded two more shots into the pair behind him. One went down, but the Gamorrean simply howled in pain. 

A close-range blaster bolt slammed into the back of his armor, and Jango bent forward with a huff as the air was driven out of him. The man the thugs had referred to as 'boss' had better reflexes than Jango had expected. 

Normally, Jango would have dropped, rolled, and got out of the way. But with Boba there, that simply wasn't an option. Boba's safety took precedence over his own. 

Sinking two more blaster bolts into the Gamorrean's knee and nose, Jango twisted in place. Residual heat scorched his back, but Jango ignored it, ignored the grunts of pain from the guard he'd just shot as he pointed one blaster towards the slaver. 

"Huh. I guess what they say about Mandalorians is true after all," the man said, his eyes flickering with frantic calculation, his blaster steady on Boba's tiny form. "I guess that what we have here is a stand-off. You shoot me, I shoot the kid." 

Jango paused. Slowly, he began tipping the muzzle of his blaster downwards, keeping a close eye on the Human. The man smirked, keeping his own blaster level, but his eyes . . . yes. His eyes were on Jango, not Boba. _Mistake,_ Jango thought dispassionately. _Always keep your eyes on your target._

A quick flex of his wrist, and Jango's whipcord flew out and slung itself around the slaver. With his elbows pinned tight to his body, the man couldn't move enough to threaten Boba, and Jango made sure of that by jerking on the cord. 

The man fell to his knees, and Jango could hear the injured Gamorrean scrambling away. It seemed that the thug had decided that there were better opportunities elsewhere. Jango let him go, more concerned with the slaver on his knees before him. A few steps brought him as close as he wanted to be, well out of lunging range. 

"Next time someone tells you they're a bounty hunter, maybe you should listen," Jango suggested. 

The slaver, catching the implication that Jango might let him go alive, jerked his chin up. "I . . ." 

What the man was about to say, Jango would never know or care. A single blaster bolt to the head silenced the man, his corpse tumbling to the sand the same way the other three had. It was the work of a moment to retrieve his whipcord, and then Jango went back to his shivering son. 

"Boba, ad'ika, morut'yc," Jango said gently, kneeling on the dry, hard-packed ground. _It's safe._

Carefully, Boba peeled open one eye, then two. "Dad?" 

"I'm here, Boba. It's all right now." 

Boba looked around as he pushed himself to his feet, and Jango could see his eyes catching on the scattered bodies laying still in death. "Did you kill them, Dad?" 

"Yes, Boba," Jango confirmed. "It's what I do." 

Boba bit his lip, and Jango could see the conflict as his kid tried to reconcile the father who loved him with the bounty hunter who had just killed four people in under a minute. "Were they bad?" 

"They were very bad. They were slavers." Jango was tempted to go over and kick the chief slaver's body a few times, but he resisted for Boba's sake. 

"They wanted to take me!" Boba chin trembled, and Jango held out his arms as Boba lurched forward to clutch him tight and sob into his neck. Jango muttered soothing nonsense in a mixture of Basic and Mando'a, stroking his son's hair as the overwhelmed four-year old hung on to his father like an anchor in the shifting tide of his life. If Jango had anything to say about it, Boba would never know what it was to be enslaved. 

When Boba's sobs began to die away, he leaned back from Jango. Jango let him go with one last run of blaster-calloused fingers down the side of his head. "Don't forget to drink some water, Boba," Jango reminded him. 

Boba hiccupped and nodded, his hand going for the canteen strapped to his side. 

"You shouldn't stay here." 

Jango, still on his knees, turned to look at the owner of the soft voice. "Why not?" 

"Because that was Garkesh, and he had friends who know Gardulla," the old slave-woman said simply. "If you go now, the scavengers can take what is useful from the bodies and they will disappear." 

Jango nodded. Reasonable thinking, especially in a place like this. "Thanks for the warning. Come on, Boba, let's go." Jango hoisted Boba into his arms, and the woman faded back between two houses without another word. 

It took only minutes to make it to Vartto's, and Jango's shoulders relaxed a little from their tension as he stepped inside and caught sight of a familiar pair of horns. With the cantina so sparsely populated, the Devaronian behind the bar saw them as soon as he glanced over. "Fett!" he bellowed, his wide mouth splitting in a grin. "Where have you been? Nothing for five years, that's what you give me. They said you were dead!" 

With Boba still on his hip, Jango sauntered over to the bar. "No-one's managed to kill me yet." 

"So I see!" Vartto put down the dishtowel in his hands and beckoned to him. "I do not remember this little one from the last time we spoke. Come, come, we should catch up! " 

Jango nodded, the recent ambush still fresh in his thoughts. "You first." 

Vartto had no issues with that, leading Jango through a door marked 'Staff Only'. Scans showed nothing special - no suspicious heat signatures, no weapons, no recent movement that suggested a trap. Jango cautiously edged through the door, and Vartto waved him over to a battered double couch. If the furniture could stand up to Vartto's weight, it could handle Jango's armor. 

He leaned over to deposit Boba on the couch first, and Vartto hissed from behind him. Startled, Jango whirled on the other man, who was seated inoffensively in an equally battered armchair. 

"Your back, my friend! The scorch marks, the heat must have reached your skin. I will find the medpack." Vartto nodded decisively, rising slowly enough to disarm Jango's overactive threat responses, and left through a door at the far side of the room from the cantina entrance they'd used. 

Now that Jango wasn't running on the battle high of endorphins and adrenaline, he could feel the sting where the heat from the blaster bolt had radiated through his armor. His under-armor layer was heat-resistant, but it had its limits. A close-range, full-power blaster bolt such as the one the slaver had hit him with exceeded those limits, even taking into account the protection of his backplate, but his armor had done its job. He was still standing, a death blow reduced to a minor injury. 

Vartto bustled back in, opening the medkit and letting Jango take a good look at the contents. Standard medkit, as new as it got on Tatooine, and most of the contents still sealed. "You can treat yourself," Vartto offered as he sat down again, "but it will be easier if I do it." 

Slowly, Jango nodded. Twenty years of acquaintance had bought Vartto that much trust, although Jango had no doubts that the Devaronian would sell the information about his injury to anyone who paid enough. There was little enough risk in agreeing, since Vartto had already noticed the blaster burn. 

His hands went to his shoulder-straps, loosening one after the other, before he undid the side-clasps of his cuirass. Pulling the whole thing off over his head, he settled it next to Boba on the couch, his child pulling it close for the surrogate comfort it provided. Eyes wide and the corners of his mouth downturned, Boba kept his eyes on his father as Jango undid the top half of his under-armor and stripped down to bare skin. With Jango unable to smile through the helmet he still wore, he ducked his head forward and tilted it a little to the side. Boba responded by loosening his grip on the silvery metal, a little of the strain easing out of his face. 

There was another hiss from behind him, and Jango knew what the Vartto must be looking at. Jango had not lived an easy life, and his skin was marked with the evidence of it. 

Vartto said nothing, however, merely kicking a low stool made from recycled droid parts in front of himself. "Here," he invited. 

Jango settled himself on the stool, bracing against the sting of antiseptic as Vartto began to wipe down the burn area. "I'm looking for someone," Jango said, the familiar words pulling him out of his last fight and towards his next one. 

Vartto traced a stylized burn mark on the back of Jango's left shoulder, and it took an exercise of willpower for Jango to stay still. "You always are, bounty hunter," he said in time-honored reply. 

"She's not a bounty." 

"Now, that is unusual." Vartto switched from the antiseptic to the burn gel, the chill of it more intense against the heat of the day. 

"Name of Skywalker. Her son left about five years ago, probably in the company of a Jedi." 

Vartto's hand stilled. "I know how you feel about Jedi, Mandalorian," he said, and the hint of warning in his voice was not lost on Jango's experienced ears. 

"It's not about the Jedi. It's about what they should have done." Jango couldn't keep the contempt out of his voice, and he didn't try. Vartto's hands remained unmoving, and Jango wouldn't be as successful as he was if he couldn't add two and two together and come up with _slave_. "I want to free her." 

The stifled inhalation behind him told Jango he'd hit the mark. "And why do you want to free Shmi Skywalker, Fett?" 

Jango's mouth cracked in an unseen, sideways grin. "Would you believe it if I told you that a madman said freeing her would save the galaxy?" 

Vartto snorted, and his hands finished smoothing on the anaesthetic burn gel. "I've heard stranger, running this cantina." 

"And helping to run the railroad." 

Red-brown hands passed Jango the end of a bandage. "Hold this in place - no, a little higher. There. I know nothing about any underground railroad or missing slaves." 

"Of course not." Jango's voice was drier than the dust of Mos Espa. "Will you tell me where Shmi Skywalker is?" 

Vartto clicked his tongue. "What if I don't?" 

"Then I look elsewhere." Jango withdrew the fingers he had pressed over the bandage, letting it tighten naturally. He waited, as patient as a hunter waiting for his prey to show their head above ground, as Vartto passed the bandage around his chest.

"What if she doesn't want to go?" Vartto asked idly. 

"Then I leave her here, a free woman." Casually, Jango lifted his own hand to his shoulder and pressed down on the old scar branded into the flesh of his back. 

Vartto tucked the end of the bandage into itself. "She's owned by a Toydarian named Watto. I'll give you directions for his junkyard."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Translations:**
> 
> Boba, novo gar sur'haai - Boba, shut your eyes  
> Daab - Down  
> Boba, ad'ika, morut'yc - Boba, kiddo, [it's] safe.


	6. Between the Salt Water and the Sand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shmi Skywalker meets a Mandalorian and his son, and takes a risk.

Shmi scrubbed hard at the sand-crusted fuel injector, grateful that Watto had allowed her to work in the ragged tent that served as the 'back room' of his junkyard. The hot desert wind cut through the holes in the side, carrying bursts of fine grit that could blind an unprepared slave, but the precious shade it offered was worth the inconvenience. 

"Shmi! Hay lapa no ya!" 

Setting the fuel injector aside, Shmi lifted away the sand-scarred face shield that had once performed service as a medical mask and stepped out into the unforgiving heat of Tatooine's twin suns. Across the yard, Watto hovered in the doorway to his office, beckoning impatiently before disappearing into the low, domed building. 

Shmi was rarely, if ever, allowed in the building that served as Watto's office, which held his safe and the few portable items of decent value that he had acquired over the years. The rare times she had been there - always under Watto's supervision - had been to assist with customers. She was no mechanical genius like her little Ani had been, but she knew where to find every item that Watto owned. 

"Cheeka! Coona tee-tocky malia?" Watto snapped as she stepped inside the office, pausing in the doorway to allow her eyes to adjust. 

"Forgive me, Master," she murmured. Watto wasn't looking for her reasons, but for a way to vent his stress. As slave-owners went, Watto had never been cruel, had never hit her or denied her water ration. Words meant little from him. 

"Bah! This man wants radiator fins for a Firespray-31 ship. I told him, we do not have those! No-one has those!"

Translated, that meant, _find me an alternative and get me a sale_. 

Shmi took in the man standing on the other side of the sale counter. Fully armored in silver and blue, heavily armed in a way that suggested mercenary or bounty hunter to her experienced eyes. Not a man to cross - but a man who was holding on tight to the hand of a young boy of perhaps four or five. A well-fed child in good clothes, who had never known hunger or thirst. 

"A Firespray-31?" Shmi checked, and the man inclined his head slightly. "Those were from Kuat Drive Yards. We have some radiator fins from Wayfarer-class ships which could be made to fit." 

"Hah!" Watto brightened with mixed greed and relief. "There, see! We have parts you can use. Shmi, go, go, fetch the parts." 

"How many, Master?" she asked the armored man. 

If she hadn't been looking, she wouldn't have caught the glint of light on his armor as he winced. "Two. One to install, one for backup." 

The boy tugged at the man's hand, drawing his immediate attention. "Can I go with her, Dad?" 

Shmi hid a smile as the kid widened his eyes pleadingly, and the man sighed. "All right, Boba. But stay with her, and don't leave the junkyard." 

Boba trotted over to her and attached himself to her hand, just like Ani had at his age, and she swallowed back the memory as she led him towards the wall where the fins had been left. 

"What's it like, living here?" 

Those wide eyes were peering up at her now, and this time Shmi let herself smile. "It is hot and dry, and sometimes we have sandstorms that can rip the flesh from your bones. But there's beauty here too, if you let yourself see it." 

"I live on a water planet," Boba said artlessly. "It rains a lot, and it's much colder. The buildings are all white inside. But I guess it's pretty too, if you like it." 

"It sounds very different from Tatooine," Shmi said, diverting them briefly from their path to fetch Watto's battered old hover-cart. 

"Yeah! And there's all kinds of people here that I haven't seen yet. Dad says he'll take me to a nice planet one day, one with green plants that aren't seaweed." 

"It would be nice to see a planet like that," Shmi said, ruthlessly locking away the surge of wistfulness she felt at the idea. Hopes and wishes were not things for slaves. 

"Do you want to come with us?" Boba asked, the child's simple offer nearly resurrecting that hope before she starved it down again.

"I can't, Boba," she said gently. "I have to stay here. Maybe you can visit some day, and tell me about it." 

"I will!" 

They came to a stop next to the fins. Watto didn't do anything so simple as label them, not when he had Shmi to remember them for him, but she knew precisely which ones she was looking for. "Careful, now. These are heavy, they could hurt you if they fall on you." 

Boba promptly scooted out of the way, into the exact spot that Shmi had been about to tell him to stand in. Well, perhaps with a bounty hunter as a father, he had been taught to assess the world around him a little better than most young children. 

Shmi lowered two of the radiators that were in the best condition onto the cart, and strapped them down to prevent the ungainly things from falling off. She glanced over at Boba, who to her astonishment was in the same place as she'd left him, and offered her hand to him. "Come, Boba. Time to go back." 

* * * 

". . . low as I can go. Take it or leave it. I can always find other buyers for these." The growl in Watto's voice as Shmi tucked the cart against the side of the building suggested that Shmi's master was on the losing side of the price negotiations. 

The armored man huffed, then named a reasonable amount as Boba raced back to his father's side. "I can always find other merchants, now that I know Wayfarers have compatible parts," he pointed out. "I must have seen half a dozen in the port, coming in." 

"Bah! Fine. I accept your offer." Watto crossed his arms, huffing. "What will you do now, eh? Buy my whole shop for a price that would not even feed me for two days?" 

"I don't need your shop." The man's helmet turned in Shmi's direction, and tilted sideways in thought. "What's your name?" 

"What? You want to buy her? You think she's pretty or something?" Watto gave a raucous laugh. "If you want that, I know somewhere I can recommend. Much cheaper than the cost of a slave!" 

"I said, what's her name." The man's free hand drifted casually to the grip of his blaster as the implications hit home. Despite the heat of the day, Shmi felt cold.

Watto must have seen the movement too. "Easy, easy, no need for that! Her name is Shmi. Shmi Skywalker." 

The man let his hand drop to hang loosely at his side, though the flex of his fingers betrayed lingering irritation. "Skywalker. Are you any good with machines?" 

"Oh, you want help with installation! Sure, sure, she can do that. I charge by the hour, so she had better be back here as soon as that fin is installed. I charge extra for damages." 

Shmi allowed herself a silent exhale as the tension in her shoulders relaxed. Between Watto's exorbitant 'damages' charge and the armored man's own indifference, she should be safe enough. 

"Dad. Dad!" 

The man looked down at Boba, blatantly ignoring Watto in favor of his son. The mother in Shmi approved. "What is it, Boba?" 

"Can she come with us to see the green planet? Please, Dad?" 

The man chuckled, and there was none of the malice Shmi was used to hearing in it. "That's up to her, verd'ika." And then that focused attention was back on her, but this time Shmi lifted her chin and stared back. "Shmi Skywalker. If you had the choice, would you like to visit other planets?"

"Now wait . . ." Watto began. The armored man merely lifted a hand in his direction and the Toydarian fell silent. 

Would she? With Ani gone, there was little for her here. Recklessly, she let those forbidden hopes and wishes bubble up to the surface, looking in them for an answer.

Yes. _Yes._ She wanted to see the galaxy she had been locked away from since she was young. Wanted to see those other planets, perhaps even as a free woman, desperately wanted to go with Boba and stand with her feet on green grass for the first time in decades. She wanted to speak more with this man, who addressed her directly instead of talking to Watto as if she were no more than one of the engine parts on display. It was a foolish risk - even if the unknown man bought her, she had no knowledge of what would happen to her after that. 

But if she said no, she would continue to be a slave anyway. Was she brave enough to throw away everything on this risk?

"May I ask a question?" she murmured.

"Of course." 

"What's your name?" 

"Jango Fett." 

The name meant nothing to her, but he had given it to her freely. "What are you, Jango Fett?" 

"I'm a Mandalorian warrior. A bounty hunter." Jango held still as she pinned him under her gaze, offering her no threat and putting up no defense. 

"Have you ever hunted slaves, Jango Fett?" 

There was an odd noise from him, a hard exhale mixed with a touch of growl which turned electronically flat through his helmet speakers. "No. I don't hunt slaves. Or ex-slaves, unless they've committed another crime since they became free." 

She believed him. That kind of intensity was difficult to fake, and too easily checked by prospective employers. And he had flinched when she had called him Master. "If I could choose, Jango Fett?" she said softly, her eyes locked on the helmet's T-visor. "I would go." 

Jango inclined his head to her, then turned to Watto and rattled off a price. "That much will buy you a decent inventory droid - and a new hover cart." 

Watto's wings buzzed as they lifted him higher into the air. "She's worth more than . . . fine, fine, there is no need to pull your blaster! But you take care of her, you understand? If I hear you have hurt her, you will never buy parts in Mos Espa again. From anyone." 

Shmi's lips parted, a tiny, bemused smile lifting the corners of her lips as she looked at her owner. At her _former_ owner, as Jango handed Watto enough truguts and wupiupi to pay for both her and the parts. "I will do what I can to protect her from harm, but if she chooses to go elsewhere, I will not stop her," Jango Fett said formally as Watto handed him the controller for Shmi's slave chip. "Shmi Skywalker is a free woman."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Huttese:**
> 
> Hay lapa no ya! - Come out of there!
> 
> Cheeka! Coona tee-tocky malia? - Woman! What took you so long?
> 
> **Mando'a:**
> 
> Verd'ika - Little warrior, also 'private' when used as an army rank.


	7. A Farewell to Chains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shmi makes choices, Jango tells some uncomfortable truths, and Boba needs a nap.

The joy bubbling up under her skin was intoxicating as Shmi sorted her limited possessions into two piles on her former bed. In the smaller one; the few clothes that she owned, a few carved japor snippets, hair pins, and a handful of other personal items. In the larger, the things that would go to her neighbors - blankets, foodstuffs, whatever things she had acquired that did not belong to the house Watto had supplied her with. 

Her fingers moved to her upper arm, rubbing unconsciously against the spot where her chip had been deactivated. Jango had promised that as soon as they reached a world with decent medical care, she could have it surgically removed, and in her giddy state she chose to believe him once more. It was easier to relearn choice when Jango threw it at her every few minutes - what kind of food did she like? Would she prefer a poncho or a sweater to warm her against the chill of space? Did she want any weapons? (She had declined the last, and told him that she would be more of a danger to herself with a weapon she did not know how to wield.) The option to stay here and free on Tatooine, or travel the stars and be free whether it was with him or on another ship. 

"Shmi, what about these?" Boba dashed in, holding up a handful of sandstone carvings made to look like ships. 

"Oh," Shmi said softly, lifting a finger to stroke one of them. "Where did you find these, Boba?" 

"There was a hole in the floor, the stone over it hadn't settled right," Boba said proudly. "These were in it."

"They belonged to my son. A friend made them for him when he was about your age." An hour ago, the reminder of Anakin would have brought forth a familiar melancholy. Now, with the knowledge of _freedom_ burning inside her, Shmi could only smile. Her son was free, and she was free, and no matter what came in the future it would not change those facts here and now. "Why don't you keep them? I'm sure he'd be glad to know that they were going to someone who'd appreciate them." 

Boba brightened. "Thank you, Shmi!" 

Shmi returned to her sorting, fitting her own belongings into a rough pack and laying out the rest on the kitchen table. Ma Kitru would appreciate the fruit, and Elin needed a new blanket . . .

A knock on the door roused her from her deliberations, and she opened it to find Jango standing on the other side. "May I come in?" he asked. 

"You may," she said, warming again to the idea that if she told him to wait outside, he would do so. That she could say no, and other people would listen. She could never again be ignored because she was property. 

He entered the house that would soon no longer be hers, politely removing his helmet and setting it on one of the chairs. "I found the supplies I was looking for," he said gruffly. "Is there something I can do to help?" 

"You've already done so much for me," she protested faintly.

He shrugged. "You looked after Boba for me. Fair's fair." 

* * *

The three of them must make quite a picture, Shmi thought as she led Jango and his son through the narrow streets of the slave quarters. A slave woman - no, a woman dressed as a slave, but no longer one - a young boy, and a Mandalorian warrior towing a laden hover-cart. Two radiator fins, Shmi's personal bag, the crate that contained Threepio, two wrapped parcels that belonged to Jango, and the things that Shmi would pass on to those she knew. 

Distributing her offerings went quicker than Shmi expected to. At each house, when they learned that Shmi was freed, they embraced her and said a brief farewell, then let her walk away. 

"Your name will be one of freedom," Ma Kitru said as they stopped to pass on the basket of fruit to her. "We will remember the story of Shmi, the woman who was free to walk the sky." 

"Thank you," Shmi breathed as she leaned down to let the old woman kiss her forehead. It felt like a blessing and a gift, and a warning and a goodbye, all in one. "I will remember you." 

* * *

By the time they reached the port, the first sun had set and the air was cooling. The port was still safe enough for now, but once the sun went down Shmi would not want to be here alone. 

Beside her, Jango led the way to his ship. It was a strange, curved thing like an insect or a sliced fruit, and Shmi slowed her steps as she approached it. The now-lighter hover-cart trundled obediently at her heels, nudging the back of her calf as she stopped by the lowering ramp. 

"Could you hold Boba for a few minutes?" Jango asked. As ever, Jango presented an odd dichotomy. Boba, tired from so much walking, had fallen asleep in his father's arms. The hard metal of Jango's armor didn't seem to affect the young boy in the slightest, Boba's head resting on his father's shoulder as Jango held him on his hip with one arm. Jango's other arm was free to reach for his blaster, his awareness of their surroundings greater even than Shmi's own. Care and violence, both together. Perhaps it was a Mandalorian thing. "I need to get these on board. You'd better keep your pack with you."

Silently, Shmi retrieved both bag and child, and watched as Jango hauled the cart into what she supposed must be the cargo bay. Faint metallic clangs came from inside, accompanied by a few muffled noises that might be Jango swearing. Sooner than she expected, he emerged, the ramp lifting back up as he stepped off it. 

"Shmi." His voice was rough from the dry desert heat, despite his conscientiousness in keeping himself and Boba hydrated. He'd insisted Shmi share their supplies as well until she'd held up her own flask - rougher and heavier than the sleek ones Jango and Boba carried, but it did its work. "Before we leave, I need to tell you something. Then you can decide what you want to do next." 

Shmi considered his words. She was free, with her own chip controller deactivated and in her possession. She had no money, but she knew people who might employ a former slave in honest work. She had her possessions, and the clothes on her back and the shoes on her feet. She was not trapped if she chose to walk away - and Jango had not yet explained his capricious decision to free a random slave. She found that she wanted to know. "All right." 

Jango's helmet tilted as he looked down at his son. "I hadn't expected to stay long enough to need a room," he confessed. "My ship isn't made for staying in on-planet. Do you know a decent place around here?" 

Shmi nodded. "The Drunken Hutt, two streets over. One of my friends cleans the rooms there, and the doors have good locks. You're best off giving them half the fee now and half when you leave, though. Otherwise they'll charge you double when you check out." 

"I appreciate the advice. Lead the way?" 

He hadn't asked her to hand Boba back, so she carried him with her. Jango's son was heavier than her own had been at this age, and she was glad that at least this child had been well fed, but her arms were beginning to ache. 

Once inside, Jango haggled for two rooms - one for himself and Boba, and one for 'my friend'. The Gran manning the bar that doubled as a reception desk didn't seem to care as long as Jango gave her enough wupiupi, though she grumbled a bit when Jango followed Shmi's advice regarding payment. Two keycards were slapped onto the bar top, and the Gran waved vaguely at the stairs down before turning to serve another customer. 

"Grab whichever you want," Jango said, gesturing to the two plastoid cards. Shmi selected one at random, and Jango nodded before flicking the other into a belt pouch. 

Two levels down, the air felt night-cool on Shmi's desert-adapted skin. Boba was still a warm bundle of sleepy boy in her arms, although he was beginning to make the familiar noises of a toddler about to wake. 

"These are ours," Jango said, gesturing to a pair of doors opposite each other. 

Boba gave a tiny yawn next to her ear. "Shmi?" he asked, all sleepy confusion. 

"That's right, Boba," she said softly. "Your father's here." 

Jango held out his arms for Boba, and the transfer was accomplished with the ease of two experienced parents. 

"You said you had something to tell me," Shmi reminded Jango. Part of her was astonished at her presumption, but that was the part of her that knew how to be a slave. She was free now - now, and tomorrow, and all the tomorrows after that.

"Yes." Jango's helmet twitched as if he wanted to duck his head, but if that was the case he managed to stop himself. "Would you prefer my room or yours?" 

Shmi considered the relative dangers. In hers, it would be difficult to make him leave if he insisted on staying, but she could always sit by the door and flee back to the lively bar on the surface level. In his, Boba would be there, and perhaps the boy would be a moderating influence on his father's behavior. She could choose when to leave. From there, she could run back to her room and lock the door against him, although she had no doubt that Jango's abilities extended to slicing the mild security the lock offered. 

Jango had offered her no threat so far, but she had been a slave for many years. A person's actions were a truer reflection of them than their words could ever be, especially when they believed they held greater power and worth than the one they spoke to. 

Yet . . . Jango had spoken to her as a person. Had listened to her opinions, had trusted her with his son, had helped her hand out her few possessions without a word of complaint. Knew how to speak to a slave and what she would think about. He could easily have told her to come find his ship at the port, but he hadn't. Was she willing to trust him? 

Provisionally, yes. But that didn't mean she had to throw away good sense. 

"Yours," Shmi decided. 

Jango nodded without arguing, and entered the room first. He left the door open, the suggestion implicit that she was still free to go should she so wish. 

Inside, the room was small and simple. Two narrow beds, one on either side of the entrance, each with a locker at the foot for personal goods. At the other end of the room was a closed door which led to what must be a 'fresher. The blankets on the beds were worn, but they were clean and intact. 

Jango had opted to sit on one of the beds, near the 'fresher door, Boba cuddled up on his lap. Shmi lowered herself cautiously to sit on the mattress opposite, as near to the entrance door as she could get. It hissed closed, but the slow blink of the green light in the control panel next to the door said it was still open. 

"I came to Tatooine specifically to free you," Jango said bluntly. 

Of all the things Shmi might have expected to hear, that wasn't among them. 

"It's a complicated story. Are you willing to hear it? The room is yours for the night, whether you hear me out or not." 

The decision was oddly easy. "I'll hear your story." 

Jango's shoulders dropped an inch or so, and he lifted his hands to take his helmet off. He fussed with its placement for a moment, settling it on the blankets and pointing it directly at the wall behind him. 

"One of my recent bounties took me to Lola Sayu. There's a prison there that they call the Citadel, designed to contain rogue Force-users." Jango swallowed. "I spoke to one of the prisoners. He had visions of the future, and he saw some of mine. I asked him how to stop it." 

A flicker of blue caught Shmi's eye as Jango's helmet projected an image against the wall. A bearded man, relatively young, with old, old eyes that seemed to stare directly into Shmi's. _"Skywalker's mother,"_ rasped the recording. _"Save her. She is the key."_

The image faded, but the words replayed themselves inside her head. 

"I found you through the Temple records," Jango continued. "Your son is apprenticed to a Jedi, and his file mentioned that he came from Tatooine. I found you faster than I expected." 

"Anakin is safe? He's well?" Shmi's fingers clutched at the old blanket, as desperate for news of her son as she had been for water at the height of the driest days. 

"I didn't read all of his file," Jango admitted. "But I've got it on my ship. I'll get you a copy." 

"Thank you," Shmi breathed. 

"We don't actually need the radiator fins, either," Boba piped up.

Jango tossed a fondly exasperated look at his offspring. "I do need them as spares, but the ones I currently have installed are fully functional." 

Shmi nodded, a part of her oddly grateful to find a lie among Jango's presentation of truth. On Tatooine, there were few who could afford unadorned honesty, and as falsehoods went it was a minor one. 

"If you prefer not to go anywhere with a man who followed the word of a mad prophet, I'll buy you passage to wherever you want to go," Jango offered. "If you're somehow willing to go with me . . . I can find you a job, on the planet where I'm currently based. Or I can drop you off wherever you choose." 

Shmi shook her head. "Who are you, Jango Fett?" she demanded, meeting his eyes and refusing to back down. "You throw money about like sand, you do everything possible to stop me feeling trapped. You could have bought me and not freed me, you could have freed me and left me to make my own way. Instead, you offer everything you think I could want." 

"It's everything I wish I'd had," Jango snapped, the hand not holding Boba pressing against the back of his shoulder. 

Instead of making her afraid, the words only crystallized Shmi's unconscious convictions. "Will you show me?" she asked. 

Jango was still for long moments as Shmi waited for his answer. Then he gave a sharp nod, and carefully rolled Boba into the bed he'd been sitting on. "Sleep, son," Jango murmured, kissing his forehead. Boba made a wordless noise and rolled over, putting his back to the room. 

Deliberately, Jango turned his back to Shmi and began to remove his upper armor. She didn't know the names for the pieces, but they fell section by section to the bed next to her. Eventually, he was down to his dusty blue under-armor, and he removed that too. 

The first thing that caught her eye was the bandage wrapped around his torso. It smelled of sweat and bacta, and looked relatively fresh. Above and below were old scars, telling her that today's injury was not the first he had endured. And - there, where his hand had been. That was no scar from blade or blaster. 

Without thinking, she rose to her feet and stepped behind Jango. The bounty hunter stayed still, and suddenly Shmi's perspective turned around. While she trusted him not to hurt her, he was trusting her here with the same. Vulnerable, unarmored, with his back to her and his child sleeping not two paces away. 

"I know that mark. It's blurred, but . . . the spice traders?"

"The spice traders," Jango confirmed. 

Shmi backed away, and Jango reached for his shirt to cover himself again. Only when he was dressed did he turn around, his eyes unreadable. 

She did not delude herself that she knew everything of the man before her, but perhaps she knew enough. "What if I go with you, and decide to leave later?" 

"I'll take you wherever you want to go." 

Shmi had chosen freedom, had chosen risk, and she would choose it again. "I'll go with you, Jango. I still want to see that green planet that Boba promised me." 

Without the armor, it was even easier to see how Jango's body lost its tension. "Then you'll see it, Shmi."


End file.
